Salmon Creek Farms Natural Pork Genetics

Nutrition

No antibiotics are allowed in feed. No antibiotics are allowed to promote growth or enhance performance. No hormone or hormone-like growth enhancement drugs will be used in market pigs.
• Pigs will only be fed high quality feeds from the time they are born (mother’s milk or milk replacement) through the growing and finishing phases of production.
• No rendered animal proteins including meat meal, bone meal, or blood meal will be used.
• No reclaimed restaurant fats or oils will be used to avoid the unintended introduction of feed contaminants.
• Our hogs are finished on wheat and barley.
• All nutritional supplements will be produced and distributed by approved sources.

No antibiotics are allowed in feed. No antibiotics are allowed to promote growth or enhance performance.
• Historically, pig producer fed very small levels of antibiotics to their pigs. These antibiotics allowed the pigs to grow faster and more efficiently when challenged by disease. In some cases, when bacteria are exposed to low levels of antibiotics for long periods of time, they can become resistant to the antibiotic. Some have expressed concerns that pork producers are contributing to the production of strains of bacteria that could be resistant to human antibiotics. While this has not been proven, the argument has been embraced and the industry is moving to eliminate feed-grade antibiotics. We have already taken this step by eliminating the use of feed antibiotics.
• Pork producers use antibiotics for the same reason people do, to prevent and cure infection and disease. We prevent disease through management, hygiene, and extraordinary pig care. By focusing on a proactive “wellness” approach to disease prevention, our preventative measures have created an environment with little disease, illness, or injury. Consequently, our family farmers do not feed antibiotics to their pigs.
• SCFMA believes it is improper to withhold treatment from sick and/or injured animals. When individual animals are treated, they must be identified. By identifying these animals, they can be removed from the Salmon Creek Farms Natural Pork program.

No hormone or hormone-like growth enhancement drugs will be used in market pigs
• Artificial growth hormones and growth enhancers have historically been common in beef cattle feeds, but not in pig diets. Today, there are no artificial growth hormones available for use in pig feed. However, there is an artificial growth enhancer, ractopamine (Paylean). Ractopamine is often fed to pigs to make them more efficient and to increase the muscle and decrease the fat in the pig. The use of ractopamine in our swine diets is not allowed.